Monday night dinner: Leftovers, kind of

I got home fairly late this evening and didn't have much time to cook. I had initially planned to sautee up our kale/chard, microwave some frozen chicken tenderloins in marinara sauce (I see your skepticism, but they turn out really well and it's SO fast) and prepare some kind of grain to finish it up. Instead, I noticed that we had some leftover coconut milk-poached chicken (yum/yay!) and already-steamed sweet potato cubes (leftover from Sunday's waffles). Sounds good to me!

So I went ahead with the chard: washed thoroughly and then chopped roughly, thrown into a pan with a little bit of olive oil, salt, pepper, a few dashes of lemon juice and a teaspoon or so of crushed garlic (a tip: I hate cleaning out our garlic press, so every month or so I will do several whole heads of garlic, and store the crushed garlic in a glass jar in the fridge. It seems to sweeten and mellow over time, but I'm cool with that. I have also considered freezing it in little cubes, like you can buy in the store - I just haven't found a suitable tray yet!) Sauteed over medium heat, the chard cooks down in under 10 minutes. I usually put the ribs in first and let them soften up for a minute or two before I put in the leaves.

The sweet potato got a heavy dusting of cinnamon and a few minutes in the microwave to warm up, as did the chicken - and that is how I made dinner AND cleared out the fridge in 15 minutes. Not too shabby. :)

Sweet Potato, Cabbage and Lentil Tagine

Looking around online for something that might use up some cabbage as well as some sweet potatoes, I came across this recipe for a root vegetable tagine. I didn't have any parsnips or turnips on hand, so I just substituted (you guessed it) more sweet potatoes for the missing veggies, and as a result turned it into a sweet potato, cabbage and red lentil tagine with a little bit of carrot. I also substituted some nice juicy raisins in for the dried apricots, which worked out fine.

I heated up about 1 Tbsp. olive oil in a pan, then added 4 c. chopped cabbage, 4 c. cubed sweet potato, 1 c. chopped carrots, 1 c. dry red lentils, 1/2 c. raisins and a 1/2 inch knob of ginger, minced (we keep ginger root in the freezer, it stays good there for a couple months and is really easy to chop and grate when it's frozen!). Sauteed all this over medium heat about 5 minutes while I mixed up the spices (1/2 tsp. kosher salt, 1/2 tsp. ground cumin, 1/2 tsp. paprika, 1/4 tsp. cinnamon, 1/4 tsp. turmeric, 1/8 tsp. allspice, a few flakes crushed red pepper and a few grinds of black pepper). Added the spice mixture to the tagine and stirred until incorporated, then added just under 4 c. vegetable stock and 14 oz (one can) of diced tomatoes. Brought to a boil and then turned the heat to low and let simmer uncovered for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

While the tagine was cooking, I made up a cup of quinoa (combine 1 c. quinoa with 1.75 c. water, bring to a boil and then simmer covered for 15 minutes or so). The recipe suggests to serve over couscous instead, which would also work well; it could probably also be eaten alone as a very hearty soup.

Time: About an hour overall - 30 minutes to prep and 30 minutes to cook. It took a while to cut up all the vegetables, but once that was done it didn't require too much attention.

Dishes/kitchen mess: 9 out of 10 on the arbitrary scale! The tagine came together in a single Dutch Oven, and I used a small saucepan to cook up the quinoa. Since I put the leftovers in the fridge in the same dish that I cooked it in, cleanup time was minimal. Awesome! There were a lot of sweet potato peelings to deal with, though.

Nutrition Info: (via Cooking Light) CALORIES 343(7% from fat); FAT 2.7g (sat 0.3g,mono 1.3g,poly 0.4g); PROTEIN 13.4g; CHOLESTEROL 0.0mg; CALCIUM 85mg; SODIUM 691mg; FIBER 10.3g; IRON 3.1mg; CARBOHYDRATE 68.4g

In other words, super healthy! The lentils provide lots of protein and fiber, and the only source of fat is the olive oil that the veggies are sauteed in. Serving over quinoa instead of couscous provided extra protein as well.